Monday, July 23, 2007

course management system Planning to Divorce the CMS ( http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/?p=50 ) By llane I'm sure my second Course Management System knows that already. It's not that it's been a bad relationship (not like my first CMS -- that was brutal -- we're not on speaking terms), but some day I'll have to move on. ...isa's Online Teaching Blog - http://lisahistory.net/wordpress  11:16:02 PM    comment [] econtent Wikipedia Corrects Encyclopedia Britannica. javipas writes "Despite all the controversy about Wikipedia's work model, no one can argue the potential of a project that has so effectively demonstrated the usefulness of the 'wisdom of crowds' concept. And that wisdom has detected a large number of mistakes in one of the most revered founts of human knowledge, the Encyclopedias Britannica. Among the wrong information collected on this page are the name at birth of Bill Clinton and the definition of the NP problems in mathematics." [Slashdot] 10:57:42 PM    comment [] laptop Sony's Solid State 2.4 Pound Laptop Reviewed. An anonymous reader writes "Last week Sony finally launched its super slim, super sexy TZ series of laptops in the US. If you've been waiting to get your hands on one of these, check out this first review of the top drawer TZ12VN, complete with solid state hard disk. It's a lot of money, but it sure looks sweet!"Read more of this story at Slashdot. 7:16:37 PM    comment [] wireless Google Pledging to Bid $4.6bn to Open Spectrum. csuftech writes "According to an article posted on vnunet, Google is pledging to bid at least $4.6bn for the FCC's upcoming auction of the 700MHz spectrum. However, Google would only be willing to pay said amount if the FCC agreed to a few conditions, namely, 'the wireless spectrum would allow consumers to download and use any software apps and content they want; allow handhelds to be used with any carrier; enable resellers to acquire wireless services at wholesale costs; and mandate that third parties such as ISPs interconnect at any point on the 700 megahertz band.' All this was disclosed in a letter [PDF] to FCC president Kevin Martin written by Google CEO Eric Schmidt."Read more of this story at Slashdot. 7:01:09 PM    comment [] privacy Search Sites Unveil Privacy Plans. Klaidas sends us word of BBC coverage of action on privacy by the top four search sites. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Ask have introduced plans to reduce the data they store and how long they store it. From the article: "The rush to improve privacy policies was started by Google in March when it announced it would start deleting the final parts of the individual address it collects from each user's computer after 18 months... Microsoft is expected to make a similar announcement to separate the identifying address and other data from searches after 18 months. The information will be held for longer if users request it. Yahoo said it would delete identifying addresses and cookies after 13 months... Ask is taking the most radical step by unveiling plans for a tool called AskEraser which, it claims, will let people tune whether data is gathered about them on a search-by-search basis." by Slashdot 6:58:38 PM    comment [] search plus The YouTube Debates: Power to the Remixers. Tonight's Democratic debate on CNN featuring questions asked by voters on YouTube shows the rise of remix culture, cellphone video aesthetics, and Google's political power. [Bits] 3:10:18 PM    comment [] IP RIAA Adds 23 Colleges to Hit List, Avoids Harvard. NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA has added 23 new colleges and universities to its hit list, but deliberately omitted Harvard, apparently afraid of the reaction it's likely to get there, having been told by 2 Harvard law professors to take a hike. 'Under the new scheme, the RIAA sends out what it calls 'pre-litigation' settlement letters. Actually, they're self-incrimination documents and they're designed to extort preset amounts of around $3,000 from students with the empty promise that by paying up, they'll remove the threat of being hauled into court on charges of copyright infringement. In reality, all the students are doing is providing the RIAA with personal and private information which can conceivably be used against them ...'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. 9:36:05 AM    comment [] simulation Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale. The U.S. Department of Defense is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual nodes to reflect every man, woman, and child. Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with au... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 9:34:06 AM    comment [] memory Higher-Capacity Flash Memory. Nanosys says it has found a material that can double the capacity of flash memory found in conventional chips by adding self-assembled metal nanocrystals to the flash manufacturing process and expects them to be in products as early as 2009. ... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News] 9:33:07 AM    comment [] web services Marc Andreessen’s LoudCloud Finally Rains Money. HP buys Opsware for $1.6 billion in cash, providing a big payoff for Marc Andreessen's 1999 dream originally called LoudCloud. [Bits] 9:30:08 AM    comment []

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